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Wallpaper* Reigning in Russia

By Stephanie Rebick | Posted on October 18th, 2012

While Wallpaper* may not be the cultural force that it was in the 1990s when Tyler Brûlé was at the helm, the magazine remains well worth a glance now and again. From their flashy iPad app to their limited edition handmade cover series, Wallpaper* continues to innovate in both the print and digital realms. For their November issue, Reigning in Russia, which is the last in a four-part series devoted to the BRIC countries, the magazine has commissioned a limited-edition cover from the Russian art collective AES+F. The cover image is a still from a new video piece, Reincarnation, that the collective created specifically for Wallpaper*. Although limited edition covers are hardly novel, Wallpaper* has partnered with s[edition] (see our review here), the online digital edition emporium, to release AES+F’s work as a “digital painting” that is available for sale in an edition of 1000. I’m a keen observer of these attempts to bridge the divide between print and digital, to remain relevant and innovative in the face of a rapidly changing publishing industry. It will be interesting to see if these efforts will prove successful for Wallpaper*, a magazine whose entire mandate and reputation is rooted in inventiveness and originality.